AHC - Make "Modern Latin" the official language of Italy (and possibly Romania)

How would it be possible that during the Risorgimento of the 19th century, the proponents of the social movement of Italian Unification are a bit more enthusiastic about the Ancient Roman Empire and decide to make a modernized form of Latin the official language of Italy, kinda like how 19th century Zionists were successful in turning Biblical Hebrew into Modern Hebrew to eventually become the official language of Israel?

Also a bonus AHC: There was a similar wave of national resurgence in 19th century Romanian culture. Would it be also possible to make "Modern Latin" the new official language of Romania (possibly if most Romanians were Roman Catholic rather than Orthodox)?
 
Standard Italian and Romanian are forms of Modern Latin.
While it is much more complicated than that, it is justifiable to say, simplifying a lot, that "Modern Latin" means just Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, and so on.
 
Standard Italian and Romanian are forms of Modern Latin.
While it is much more complicated than that, it is justifiable to say, simplifying a lot, that "Modern Latin" means just Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, and so on.

I meant a language that is based on either Classical Latin or Ecclesiastical Latin, but updated with modern vocabulary and possibly with a somewhat simplified grammar.
 
Basically, Ecclesiastical Latin is Classical Latin with Modern Italian pronounciation.

Still, by the 19th century, Italian is already a important language with a literary tradition that dates back from, at least, the Renaissance. Thus, Italian identity is already strongly connected with Italian language. That's not to say that it cannot be changed. Perhaps, the Pope unifies the peninsula and starts a wide spread of alfabetization in Latin?
 
There would probably be at least two things that would be necessary:

(1) Keep Latin as the main language of scholarship and diplomacy. The more people speak it already, the bigger its chances of being adopted as an official language.

(2) Make the Italian dialects further apart linguistically, so that it's basically impossible for speakers from one region to understand speakers from another. That way Latin could be attractive as a neutral option, which doesn't require the imposition of one dialect on other parts of the country.

Standard Italian and Romanian are forms of Modern Latin.

I disagree. I think they're forms of Modern Proto-Indo-European.
 
There would probably be at least two things that would be necessary:

(1) Keep Latin as the main language of scholarship and diplomacy. The more people speak it already, the bigger its chances of being adopted as an official language.

(2) Make the Italian dialects further apart linguistically, so that it's basically impossible for speakers from one region to understand speakers from another. That way Latin could be attractive as a neutral option, which doesn't require the imposition of one dialect on other parts of the country.



I disagree. I think they're forms of Modern Proto-Indo-European.
1) It was.
2) Italian local spoken forms of Romance are not mutually intelligible as such.

You are right, Modern Latin is also Modern Indo-European. ;) (In truth, there is the obvious glaring difference of Latin being an actually attested language, while PIE, while its existence is clear beyond any reasonable doubt, is reconstructed).
 
Yes, Italian dialects are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Still, every educaded person had a grasp of Tuscan (Modern Italian).
 
Basically, Ecclesiastical Latin is Classical Latin with Modern Italian pronounciation.

Still, by the 19th century, Italian is already a important language with a literary tradition that dates back from, at least, the Renaissance. Thus, Italian identity is already strongly connected with Italian language. That's not to say that it cannot be changed. Perhaps, the Pope unifies the peninsula and starts a wide spread of alfabetization in Latin?
1) Ecclesiastical Latin has Modern Italian pronounciation in Italy. My understanding is that other countries have their own standards of Ecclesiastical pronounciation.
2) Italian, or something that can plausibly called like that, was a literary, and probably commercial/interregional, standard set of linguistic varieties (with internal variation) long before the Renaissance, although it was never the exclusive literary language within all of Italy.
3) Italian national identity seems to emerge, in political terms, a lot later than Italian literary/linguistic identity (which was a largely, though not exclusively, elite matter). And Latin literacy was widespread among the elites. The point is that, when a politically relevant Italianness emerged, Classical Latin had not chance whatsoever to be its linguistic vehicle, because Standard Literary Italian was, quite correctly, felt to be precisely the specifically Italian variety of "Modern Latin", whereas Classical Latin, or its tentative simplified modern adaptations, were felt to have value, among other things, by their being internationally relevant.
4) Of course, the above point 3) is not meant to imply that there is not a huge Italian language question running for centuries.
 
Yes, Italian dialects are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Still, every educaded person had a grasp of Tuscan (Modern Italian).
My family's experience is probably atypical (I have a Tuscan great-grandmother, and in general my ancestors - of both genders - tended to have above-average educational opportunities, leading to an untypically early loss of local dialect use: my grandparents were largely Standard Italian native speakers at a time when most of their own social milieu still often used local vernacular even in almost-formal contexts).
In general, however, Tuscan does not exactly equate Modern Standard Italian; though it is the closest variety to it, and was long accepted as the measure for the Standard in many cases, at least for lexicon, syntax and morphology - but emphatically not phonetics - this is increasingly no longer the case.
 
1) Ecclesiastical Latin has Modern Italian pronounciation in Italy. My understanding is that other countries have their own standards of Ecclesiastical pronounciation.

Well, Ecclesiastical simply means 'from/of the (Catholic) Church'. Just go to a Tridentine Mass (aka the 'Latin Mass') anywhere in the world and the priest, regardless of nationality, will clearly pronounce a word like 'pace' (piece) as /patche/, with the "Italian 'c'" instead of Classic Latin /pake/ or any other possible local sound for the letter 'c'. There's plenty of material online confirming that. Priests emulate Italian speakers when speaking Latin because the Church says so.

2) Italian, or something that can plausibly called like that, was a literary, and probably commercial/interregional, standard set of linguistic varieties (with internal variation) long before the Renaissance, although it was never the exclusive literary language within all of Italy.
3) Italian national identity seems to emerge, in political terms, a lot later than Italian literary/linguistic identity (which was a largely, though not exclusively, elite matter). And Latin literacy was widespread among the elites. The point is that, when a politically relevant Italianness emerged, Classical Latin had not chance whatsoever to be its linguistic vehicle, because Standard Literary Italian was, quite correctly, felt to be precisely the specifically Italian variety of "Modern Latin", whereas Classical Latin, or its tentative simplified modern adaptations, were felt to have value, among other things, by their being internationally relevant.
4) Of course, the above point 3) is not meant to imply that there is not a huge Italian language question running for centuries.

True.

In general, however, Tuscan does not exactly equate Modern Standard Italian; though it is the closest variety to it, and was long accepted as the measure for the Standard in many cases, at least for lexicon, syntax and morphology - but emphatically not phonetics - this is increasingly no longer the case.

Also true, but that's kind of normal, as languages are living beings. Similarly, we can say that Parisian French is the origin of Standard French. However, today it's anedoctally said that the region of Tours have the "best pronounciaton" of French.
 
1) It was.

To a degree, although by the 19th century I think French was more important for international relations. I'm not sure what the most important scholarly language was at that time -- German, maybe.

2) Italian local spoken forms of Romance are not mutually intelligible as such.

Then make them even less so? Or perhaps give non-Tuscan-based dialects more of a literary tradition, so that Tuscan Italian isn't such an obvious choice to base the standard dialect on.

Well, Ecclesiastical simply means 'from/of the (Catholic) Church'. Just go to a Tridentine Mass (aka the 'Latin Mass') anywhere in the world and the priest, regardless of nationality, will clearly pronounce a word like 'pace' (piece) as /patche/, with the "Italian 'c'" instead of Classic Latin /pake/ or any other possible local sound for the letter 'c'. There's plenty of material online confirming that. Priests emulate Italian speakers when speaking Latin because the Church says so.

To be fair, I think that's a recent (late-19th-century) development. Before that, there was a greater regional variety in pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin. Catholic priests in England, for example, tended to use the same pronunciation as their Anglican counterparts, an example of which can be found here (go to 3.08 or so to hear it).
 
To be fair, I think that's a recent (late-19th-century) development. Before that, there was a greater regional variety in pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin. Catholic priests in England, for example, tended to use the same pronunciation as their Anglican counterparts, an example of which can be found here (go to 3.08 or so to hear it).

I honestly don't know. I think that proper chanting (thus, proper pronounciation) would be taken very seriously by most medieval/early modern priests. Also, Anglican Chant doesn't seem to be the same as traditional Catholic Gregorian Chant, but, I don't know, musical theory goes way beyond my knowledge.
 
1) Ecclesiastical Latin has Modern Italian pronounciation in Italy. My understanding is that other countries have their own standards of Ecclesiastical pronounciation.
Can’t speak to what it sounds like in Italy, but having learned the basics of classical pronunciation, every time there’s any Latin at mass here in the US, it sure doesn’t sound classical. From what I know of Italian, it is similar.
 
Can’t speak to what it sounds like in Italy, but having learned the basics of classical pronunciation, every time there’s any Latin at mass here in the US, it sure doesn’t sound classical. From what I know of Italian, it is similar.

There is also a somewhat variable Central European pronunciation of Latin.

For example when the Lord's Prayer is said in Latin in Hungary, it sounds like:

"Pater Noster, qui es in tséris, sanctifitsétur nómen túm."

The "c" before "e" and "i" becomes "ts", "ae" becomes "é" (like the French "é"), and stressed "e" also becomes "é". The final "t" from "est" is dropped.

There is also a tendency to replace "l" with "r" in some instances mirroring a Romanian influence where "gel", a Latin root meaning "frost" became "ger" in Romanian.

"Caesar" becomes "Tsézár" in Hungary.

Strangely in more modern and secular versions of Latin in Hungary, pronunciation sometimes mirrors modern Latin American Spanish.

For example in "O Fortuna" a song from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana", "dissolvit ut glaciem" is pronounced as "dissolvit ut glasiem."

Back when Hungary still had a semi-feudal economy, it was common for a landlord to refer to a trusted lower-class agricultural employee as "amicus" (Latin for "friend") which becomes "amice" in the Vocative Case.

In the 1920s for example, one could say to a peasant "Hey, listen up, amice!" and it was pronounced as "amitse".
 
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Interlingua, Latino sine flexione, or slightly more Italian-oriented versions should be a feasible language for united Italy.

Though constructed languages have never gone particularly far in actual use, the Latin based ones are slightly more organic and closer to an organically forming koine dialect. Many koine dialects already having spread with varying degrees of official sponsorship.
 
Can’t speak to what it sounds like in Italy, but having learned the basics of classical pronunciation, every time there’s any Latin at mass here in the US, it sure doesn’t sound classical. From what I know of Italian, it is similar.
In Italy we basically use both Ecclesiastical (more often) and Classical (usually at university levels) pronounciations. Ecclesiastical sounds basically applying Italian ortographic rules to Latin ortography (which was of course originally designed for a slightly different phonetic system, that the so-called Classical pronounciation approximates decently well). I know, however, that in France, school Latin is taught with an Ecclesiastical pronounciation that tends to be closer to French ortography, and to some extent the same happens in Spain.
The plus of Ecclesiastical pronounciations is that they roughly reflect actual historical use, while the Classical one is a reconstruction, albeit a solid and accurate one for the most part.
 
Interlingua, Latino sine flexione, or slightly more Italian-oriented versions should be a feasible language for united Italy.

Though constructed languages have never gone particularly far in actual use, the Latin based ones are slightly more organic and closer to an organically forming koine dialect. Many koine dialects already having spread with varying degrees of official sponsorship.

This reminds of @Thande 's Novalatina (which I repeatedly said I find horrible, but I suppose that was done on purpose in his TL). However, no Latin-based conlang, despite their theoretically obvious advantages, made any more headway than others. Esperanto, arguably the least unsuccessful of artificial international auxiliary languages ever proposed, borrows a lot from Latin, but cannot be said to be truly Latin-based.
Indeed, it would be possible to simplify Latin in a way that is very close to an easier version of Standard Italian... after all, this is what the Latin speakers in Italy actually did, when they slowly turned their language into the vernaculars that produced Italian itself. The end result, obviously, is a natural language, with all this entails in terms of irregularities.
 
In Italy we basically use both Ecclesiastical (more often) and Classical (usually at university levels) pronounciations. Ecclesiastical sounds basically applying Italian ortographic rules to Latin ortography (which was of course originally designed for a slightly different phonetic system, that the so-called Classical pronounciation approximates decently well). I know, however, that in France, school Latin is taught with an Ecclesiastical pronounciation that tends to be closer to French ortography, and to some extent the same happens in Spain.
The plus of Ecclesiastical pronounciations is that they roughly reflect actual historical use, while the Classical one is a reconstruction, albeit a solid and accurate one for the most part.

In my country, I can't actually think of a regular person that uses Latin on a everyday basis, even most priests don't seem to care about it. Most lawyers in the Western World use Latin expressions on a regular basis, but it mostly follows their own phonological rules. IIRC English-speaking lawyers pronounce the 'h' in 'ad hoc', but Romance speakers would simply say something like 'adoque'.

EDIT: On a side note, regardless of language, it's interesting to see that everyone always say 'stare decisis' with an English pronounciation, given that's one of the basis of the Common Law system.
 
In my country, I can't actually think of a regular person that uses Latin on a everyday basis, even most priests don't seem to care about it. Most lawyers in the Western World use Latin expressions on a regular basis, but it mostly follows their own phonological rules. IIRC English-speaking lawyers pronounce the 'h' in 'ad hoc', but Romance speakers would simply say something like 'adoque'.
This is the same in Italy. I was referring to how Latin is taught in schools and used in Church services, when it is (rarely, nowadays) but regular daily use is nonexistent (or extremely limtied) as far as I know. Even if many Italian students do study Latin (as others also do), they usually do not learn how to communicate fruitfully in it at all. Which makes sense, since in the modern world, communicating in Latin with anyone is almost always pointless.
 
This is the same in Italy. I was referring to how Latin is taught in schools and used in Church services, when it is (rarely, nowadays) but regular daily use is nonexistent (or extremely limtied) as far as I know. Even if many Italian students do study Latin (as others also do), they usually do not learn how to communicate fruitfully in it at all. Which makes sense, since in the modern world, communicating in Latin with anyone is almost always pointless.

That's interesting. Here in Latin America I don't think that kids still study Latin, unless they're in some kind of really old-fashioned tradicional Catholic School.

In France it's optional IIRC and I think that, for them, it has an utilitarian purpose. Taking into consideration that French phonology is a nightmare, learning some of the basics of Latin is a good way for them to understand French ortography and perfect their writting skills. OTOH, I can't see a reason for Italians to learn it, its ortography is as straightforward as Portuguese and Spanish.
 
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